Community TV: Delphi 6 Overview with Michael Swindell

Abstract: Anders O interviews Michael Swindell, Director of Product Management for the RAD Group, who provides an overview of Delphi 6's new features BizSnap, WebSnap and DataSnap. Includes text transcript and audio mp3

Community TV: Delphi 6 Launch Interviews

Delphi 6 Overview with Michael Swindell

Director, RAD Product Group Product Managment

Interview by
Anders Ohlsson,
Borland Developer Relations. Michael and Anders talk about the key features of
DelphiTM 6 and the goals for the product, including
BizSnapTM, WebSnapTM, and
DataSnapTM.

In Delphi 6, we focused really on three areas. The first area is e-business development, the second area is integration with our enterprise application products, and the third area is cross-platform development.

Anders

Michael, tell us how we are simplifying e-business development with Delphi 6.

Michael

With e-business, we set out to simplify next generation e-business development with web services. That's B2B [business-to-business] applications, B2C [business-to-customer] applications, and P2P [peer-to-peer] applications. We did this by developing three areas of technology: BizSnap , WebSnap, and DataSnap.

Anders

Okay, so tell us more about BizSnap.

Michael

BizSnap is centered around simplifying web services and XML development. With web services, we completely integrated SOAP and XML into Delphi, so that building web services and using web services is extremely simple and requires no re-training for any developer using Delphi. We've also provided in BizSnap the ability to transform XML documents and data between business partners and trading partners. It becomes seamless to build B2B [business-to-business] applications inside Delphi.

Anders

What about WebSnap?

Michael

With WebSnap, our focus is to build on the great capabilities in Delphi today, for building web applications, to extend the Delphi developer into today's web development teams. What we've found is that today's web development teams are made up of developers building business objects, scripters, web site developers using HTML, and, maybe even on the far side, graphic designers. What we focused on in Delphi 6 with WebSnap is bringing the Delphi developer into the web development team, so that s/he is building objects that are scriptable (by Javascript or VBscript) in web site applications that are data driven, but integrate seamlessly with sites developed in things like FrontPage and Dreamweaver.

Anders

You mentioned DataSnap, as well. What's that?

Michael

DataSnap is interesting because [it] takes a lot of the technology that we've had in the past (in products like MIDAS, which is our data-remoting capabilities and database middleware capabilities), into a new product called DataSnap, which is now web-service enabled. With DataSnap we can build database middleware that is accessible by anyone around the world over the Internet through industry standard protocols, through web services (through XML and SOAP). This also allows us to build DataSnap servers in front of enterprise-class databases (like Oracle, MS SQL and DB2), and web-service enable those databases.

Anders

Earlier you talked about the enterprise integration. Does that mean the [Borland] Application ServerTM?

Michael

Absolutely. In Delphi 6, we've done a couple things with integration with our enterprise applications. The first is that, for the first time, we are introducing both client- and server-side Corba development with VisiBrokerTM in Delphi. The next thing that we've done is we're also supporting the EJB SIDL interfaces to the new Application Server 4.5. We can now build Delphi, rich, GUI Windows clients and applications that are communicating with EJBs running in the App Server. The other thing that we can do now, as well, is build web service interfaces to the rest of the world to EJB functionality running inside the Borland Application Server. It's very powerful.

Anders

Okay, sounds pretty good. You mentioned SIDL. What is that?

Michael

That's simple IDL, and that is an IDL representation or an IDL interface to EJBs running inside the Application Server.

All the technology that we developed in Kylix, everything that was developed for Linux and Kylix is now also in Delphi 6. The CLX component library, VisualCLXTM, DataCLXTM, NetCLXTM — all the components are all in Delphi, as well as the all the designers. That means we can take a Kylix application developed on Linux, move that project over to Delphi 6, and simply recompile that application. It also means that we can build Windows applications with CLX in Delphi 6, move those projects over to Kylix, and recompile them natively for Linux.

Anders

Wow! That sounds great. Can we start talking technical details?

Michael

Absolutely. Actually, let's do one better. Why don't we actually go get some of the engineers who worked on Delphi, bring them in, and talk about some of the features specifically.

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